Wednesday - Day 3

We left Morton, Ill, early this morning headed to Moline, Iowa and Rock Island Arsenal. Again, the country side is beautiful – lots of farm land. We finally found a STARBUCKS!! My first since early Monday morning – that is a record! Moline is an old manufacturing town and is home of John Deere. There is a huge John Deere Pavilion in the middle of town. There is a new development by the river that reminds me of Bridge Street in Huntsville but so far the stores are not open. We found Rock Island Arsenal and I was able to see some of it from the bridge but we decided it really wasn’t worth the effort to go through Army security just to ride through it. We headed out toward Clinton, Iowa, because we wanted to take the scenic tour to Wisconsin. Although the map indicated the road ran along the Mississippi river, we saw very little of the river. We stopped at a roadside park and ate lunch and then were on our way again. The countryside is absolutely beautiful but there is one thing that amazes me – only the main highways are paved. All of the side roads and the driveways to houses are gravel roads. The cars in the country are covered with dirt and obviously it does very little good to wash them. We have concluded the government cannot afford to keep all of the side roads clear of snow and ice in the winter and that the cars get better traction on the gravel. That makes sense, it just really shocked me. After going through Clinton, Iowa we went to Dubuque, Iowa, which is on the Wisconsin border. Here we stopped at a Corps of Engineers Lock and Dam on the Mississippi River and made pictures of the river barges. We made a few pictures of the town, including some of their courthouse – beautiful structure. We rode over the bridge to Wisconsin (just to say we had been there) and then headed toward Minneapolis, Minnesota. We stopped for the night at Waterloo, Iowa which is about 125 miles south of Minneapolis. We were ready to get out of the car for a while and we walked through a shopping mall just to get some exercise. It has been another really good day. There are no pictures today because I can't them to upload properly and I am too tired to keep trying. Maybe tomorrow.